April 12 (25)-April 27 (May 10), 1905

22

Speech During the Discussion of the Party Rules

April 21 (May 4)

Imust confess that the arguments employed by Comrade Ivanov in defence of his
idea of a single centre seem to me untenable. (The speaker reads the
argumentation of Comrade
Ivanov):

“OnClauses 4 and 5. The system of two centres with a balancer, the
Council, has been condemned by past experience. The history of the Party crisis
plainly shows that this system provides too favourable a soil for the growth of
differences, squabbles, and Court intrigues. It means the subordination of the
people in Russia to those abroad: owing to arrests, the Central Committee
personnel is unstable, whereas the Editorial Board of the Central Organ is
constant; and the Council resides abroad. On the one hand, all the most
important objections against a single centre, based on the actual severance of
Russia from the people abroad, only confirm the idea that a split between the
two centres is possible and even probable. On the other hand, these objections
largely fall away if the Congress makes periodic conferences obligatory between
the Russian members of the C.C. and the members abroad.”

Ithas been found, however, that the fine qualities here alluded to are
possessed in equal measure both by the Central Organ abroad and by the
“genuinely Russian” Central Committee. In Comrade Ivanov’s entire
reasoning I discern the fallacy envisaged by logic as post hoc, ergo propter
hoc.[1]
Because the three centres have, pardon the
expression, played us dirty, let us have a single centre. I fail to see the
propter here. Our troubles were not due to the mechanism but to
persons; what happened was that certain persons, using a formal interpretation
of the Rules as a subterfuge,
ignored the will of the Congress. Has not the “genuinely Russian”
C.C. “dialectically” turned into its exact opposite? Comrade
Ivanov’s reasoning is—the group abroad has acted shabbily; we must
therefore put it under a “state of siege” and keep a
“tight hold” on it. As you know, I have always been an
advocate of a “state of siege” and of a “tight
hold”, so that I shall raise no objection to such measures. But does
not the C.C. deserve the same treatment? Besides, who will deny that the
Central Organ can be constant, while the C.C. cannot? This, after all, is
a fact. But in practice I shall abstain from all polemic. Formerly we had
the Council, and now we shall have a conference (of the C.C. section
working abroad and of the section working in Russia). A difference of
only a couple of letters. Our cart has been lurching all the time to the
right, towards the Central Organ—Comrade Ivanov has been laying the
straw on the right side, to cushion the fall. But I think it ought to be
laid on the left side as well, on the side of the C.C. I would subscribe
to Comrade Mikhailov’s proposal to cashier the committees, but I really
don’t know what the periphery exactly is. “Chair-warmers and keepers
of the seal” should all be smoked out; but how is one to define
precisely the concept “periphery”? “Two-thirds of the votes
of the periphery!"—but who can keep a strict record of the
periphery? I must, besides, warn the Congress against cramming the Rules
with too many clauses. It is easy enough to pen nice clauses, but in
practice they usually prove superfluous. The Rules should not be made a
collection of pious wishes....